Listening to lots of:

Listening to lots of:

Category Archives: Modern Wargaming

A couple more Zombicide survivors today – the last two from the previous batch.

“Rick” is a homage to Jason Statham as Chev Chelios from the 2009 Film “Crank 2: High Voltage“.

Zombicide “Rick” and Zombivor version.

It seems that Statham’s outfit from Crank is a somewhat popular “costume” for people to wear. I guess it’s pretty flexible and a lot more subtle than going somewhere dressed as a Jedi. Turns out that in the second film, he had some fairly distinctive shoes because product placement. No matter to me, and as they have a look I can replicate on the model, so much the better

Angry Mary is an original Zombicide survivor, from the Karl Kopinski guest artist box.

Angry Mary – a Karl Kopinski Original Survivor for Zombicide

Mary is a popular character whenever one of us manages to draw her, and from our early games kind of defaulted to Marouda’s Zombpocalypse proxy, especially since Marouda managed to draw Angry Mary pretty regularly. So Mary has her combat boots painted as Marouda’s purple Doc Martens in a semi-subtle nod.

Orez and Marouda’s favourite survivors, ready for action.

…and the results of a couple of unfortunate Zombie Spawn draws.

Zombicide figures are odd ducks. They have some really well done, subtle truescale details like the folds in clothing while at the same time often having soft details on faces and weapons. It’s a limitation of the PVC that they are made from, and while they’re pretty much the best boardgame models I’ve used or painted, I still don’t entirely enjoy painting them in the same way that I do with a metal, HIPS or resin model. Still, they get a lot of use on my tabletop, so if anything deserves to keep a priority rating in my painting (such as it is), then these figures do.

Mary’s black fatigues and gloves are pretty dark, though they are highlighted subtly, and in a way to preserve them being black as opposed to grey. I’m just not fond of the whole “shade to white” thing that’s very popular on my own models. Statham’s dark blue jacket gave me the same kind of difficulty. For a change, the photography seems to have picked both out decently.

I’ve been waiting ages to use that awful pun. I just had to finish the last of the six Zombicide dogs first.

Moog and Gapard, the American Bulldogs

The American Bulldogs were the first dogs I got finished. I attempted to pretty much match the dogs up to their appropriate artwork, but also did their collars and leads in slightly different colours so that players could have a secondary colour thing to latch into visually. Also, six black collars and leads would have been boring.

Martens and Bismuth, the German Shepherds

After finishing the Bulldogs, the others sat on my desk for literally months until I managed to force myself to paint the German Shepherds. Martens is easily my favourite paintjob of the bunch.

Lucien and Cherry, the Blue Heelers

And finally, I finished the last of the Blue Heelers. I didn’t mind doing Cherry, the ginger-brown one, but Lucian was annoying as all hell to do.

The entire pack of Zombicide Dog Companions.

Despite the fact that they all came up pretty decently, I really didn’t enjoy painting the dogs. I’m not sure why, but I kinda just lost interest in them after the Bulldogs were done, and at that point they became a chore. It might have been the smaller size, or perhaps trying to match the colours closely to the figures’ cards. I’m really not sure.

I’ve seen people clip the stands off the dog models and glue them directly to their bases, but my group tends to play Zombicide a lot, and as a result, all of the models get a lot of handling. This means they need to be and stay especially robust – no flimsy models wanted here, and if I did the clipping I’d be concerned that their leaping poses with few contact points simply wouldn’t hold up to the amount of play that we do.

They provide a very powerful buff in the game. Our group no longer really bothers to give the Dogs much in the way of commands or orders except for occasionally early on in the game if someone lacks a decent melee weapon. We also use them for the extra search action, but mostly we use them for the bonus dice to melee attacks. We’re about to finish the Season 2 campaign done vanilla-style, excepting the addition of a few extra survivors so the 4 of us can play with 2 characters each, but once that’s done, we’ll be combining everything together and there’ll be some really nasty melee-centric characters. 2x Claw Hammers with 2x American Pitbulls and the Gas Mask? 14 dice melee per action that can take out any number of Vanilla, Toxic or Berserker Walkers, Runners or Zombie Dogs and the Pitbulls’ damage of 2 as backup for Fatty duties? Ouch!

I’ve finally finished some of the second batch of Zombicide survivors (and Zombivors) that I started bloody ages ago.

“Will” is a homage to Simon Helberg as Howard Wolowitz from the popular Television program “The Big Bang Theory“.

Zombicide “Will” and Zombivor Version.

I went for one of Howard’s less outrageous outfits for this figure, partly for ease of painting and partly because we actually have to play as him, so… you know.

Howard Walowitz’ shoes. One pair of them, anyway.

I also googled Howard’s shoes, so that I’d have appropriate footwear for him to wear. I think I did a pretty good job of replicating his Vans sneakers. I also attempted to give his belt buckle the impression of Howard’s NES controller belt buckle, but it’s hard because we’re talking pretty bloody small at this stage.

“Helen” is a homage to Jodie Foster as Clarice Starling from The Silence of the Lambs (1992).

I think there’s a touch of Ally Walker as June Stahl from Sons of Anarchy in there as well. Particularly on the artwork.

Zombicide “Helen” and Zombivor Version.

Zombicide’s Helen. Possibly.

I think Jodie/Clarice is the more obvious influence, especially with “Achilles” being a clear Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter, but there’s still a solid similarity there, and I probably would still have painted the model in the brown late 80’s/early ’90s style suit, but if I had a second figure to paint, I’d definitely paint her as Stahl.

Our Brave Survivors…

…and their unpleasant eventual fate.

With a bit of luck, I’ll have two more finished in a week or two. I’ll probably have the last of the dogs finished before then, though – so they’ll likely be shown first.

Another couple of figures that I painted recently (at the same time as the first batch of Zombicide survivors) were Hasslefree’s Ray, and Dynamic Ray. Obviously I painted these as they’re Hasslefree’s take on Simon Pegg as Shaun of the Dead. Since all four figures were of the same character, it made sense to paint them all at once. I’m showing off these separately I think the Hasslefree models deserve their own post, and since people looking to check out the Zombicide or Hasslefree models may not be interested in the other. (Especially as the Zombicide one is no longer available/Kickstarter exclusive)

Hasslefree HFA007 Ray and HFA052 Dynamic Ray.

Although these are shorter than the Zombicide figures, I prefer both of these to the “official” ZC sculpt, as they have more character to them and are nice sculpts, and the cricket bat looks like a cricket bat (particularly on Dynamic Ray). These are somewhat heroic-scaled, though. “Regular” Ray is an early Hasslefree sculpt, and as such, Dynamic Ray – the later sculpt – has a better likeness of Pegg, better proportions all around, and better detailing (just look at the pants!) Still, if you’re a fan (or need a figure for that boardgame!) either or even both are a worthwhile purchase.

Hasslefree HFA007 Ray and HFA052 Dynamic Ray – rear view.

Hasslefree also has a Zombie version of Ray, though I don’t own that one at this stage. I’ll probably pick it up next time I get around to doing a Hasslefree order. And yes, Ed will be joining his mate at some stage in the future.

Since my group has been playing a fair bit of Zombicide over the past couple of months, and starting to paint the figures was one of the things that got me restarted with painting models, I’m showing off the first three here. I’m painting S2 Survivors & Zombvivors rather than the S1 figures because I’m painting them in their pairs and we haven’t cracked open the S2 box(es) yet and so don’t have their Zombvivors out.

“Fred” is a homage to Simon Pegg as Shaun from “Shaun of the Dead” (2004)

Zombicide “Fred” and Zombvivor version

I took Shaun’s black pants as a little challenge, as they’re quite nicely sculpted. To make them look black, (they are SO black in the film and stills) while still picking out the sculpt detail – but without resorting to typical light greys and almost-white highlights. I think I pulled it off. In contrast with the pants (and several other Zombicide figures), the sculpt on his head and face was a bit of a shambles (the artwork isn’t so hot, either!), and his cricket bat was clearly sculpted by someone who has never held or possibly even seen a real cricket bat, as the thing looks more like an American college fraternity paddle from a comedy film. I did pick out his two-tone-red tie, but I fear it is too subtle, and is lost in the general bloodstains on his clothing (taken from the point in the film where he’s using his tie as a headband).

“Don” is a homage to everyone’s favourite hotelier – John Cleese as Basil Fawlty from Fawlty Towers (1975-1979)

Zombicide “Don” and Zombvivor version

As always, I googled the character before beginning to paint, and found that in most images Basil’s suit was actually grey and not the brown pictured in the Zombicide artwork. In the end I made the choice to stick with brown as a brown suit just feels so much more 1970s and “Basil Fawlty”, somehow. I did carefully copy the colours of his tricolour tie from the reference photographs, though. This figure is quite nicely sculpted as well, though I found that has face again didn’t photograph all that well. (and the figures appear shinier here than IRL). A small detail that can’t be seen here is the shine and polish on living Basil’s shoes that is absent on undead Basil’s scuffed shoes.

“Rob” is a homage to Sean Connery as John Mason from “The Rock” (1996)

Zombicide “Rob” and Zombvivor version

This was the easiest of the three to paint due to the almost entirely black outfit. I’m not really a fan of over-highlighting things, and as John Mason is supposed to be a black-ops type guy, I kept his gear nice and dark. I did pick out his medical lanyard in red, and painted his twin Uzi SMGs in Vallejo Metal Black with a highlight of gunmetal, so they’re actually far brighter than is realistic. The sculptor of this figure did a good job of picking out Connery’s trademark “smirk/people’s eyebrow” look in the sculpt, and I did an okay job of keeping it followed by an average job of photographing it. The Zombvivor also looks better in person, as shiny transparent red over dark grey/black also doesn’t photograph all that well.

I started (and finished) these a few weeks ago, though the weather was bad and my mood was poor, so I didn’t take any “finished” pictures of them at the time, and the WIP ones just sat on my camera. As part of an eBay purchase, I noticed that the seller was selling a little container of resin Citadel land mines for a few bucks, so I grabbed them. Since they looked nice and simple, they only sat around for a few weeks or a month before I decided to have a go turning them into “fast scenery”.

Citadel Land Mines & scratchbuilt Minefield signs.

The signs are something I came up with after finishing the actual mines. Just made from the same kinds of Proxie bases with putty over the top. I made the actual signage out of some plastrust I-beam and some tile-textured plasticard (so I could get them the same size!) Found some WW2-era German “Minen!” signs, chose an appropriate one, multiplied it and printed them out. I figure that if you’re going to have signposted mine fields, the verbiage really should be written in German. Also added some odds and bods from the bits box to add “interest” and make them fit in better with the 40k-flavoured ones. I’ll use these in anything from WW2 gaming such as Bolt Action, etc – right up to 40k and cohorts

Here’s the montage of how they went together. Cue “Rocky” theme. Or perhaps “Montage” from that episode of South Park. You know the one. Fun fact: I didn’t take any pictures of the signs being made, even though the process is probably marginally more interesting.

I’ve looked at thesein the past, when I got some of these models as part of one of the DUST campaign sets – Operation Icarus. Basically, I liked the models so much that I bought a standalone set as well. While playing a game of KoW recently against Marouda, I decided to open and assemble the set while I waited for her to make her agonisingly slow move. This is the result.

DUST – Airfield Accessory Pack – Quonset Huts

While they’re sized for DUST to take up a terrain square each, they can easily be butted up against one another for more realistic, longer huts.

They come stacked up in the box.

Unlike the ones that come with Operation Icarus, these ones do not come assembled.

End-Walls

They do come separated from the sprue though, and pretty nicely clean – making assembly a doddle.

Slide the two walls in and you’re assembled!

With a bit of plastic cement, I went from opening the box to having them all assembled inside 10 minutes.

Just after taking the last shots, I went outside with a rattle can of Rust-Oleum spray in Nutmeg and had them all base coated. When the weather fines up for a little while at a time I can spray again (like, when I’m not at work!) I’ll give them a second light coat. Then I’ll spray on a bit of olive green and such. What I’m getting at is that they’re as easy to paint up as they are to assemble. And if I weren’t so anal-retentive at times they’d already be “good enough”. (Gotta do the window frames and such before I can call them “finished”, you see!)

As an inexpensive box of easily-assembled and easily painted terrain, I can’t recommend them highly enough. I’ll show them again once they’re 100% finished, which is more down to the current winter weather here in Melbourne making spraying difficult and proper photography a depressing proposition. I’ll (probably) get around to using them for DUST at some stage, but I like them because they’re flexible enough to be used anywhere in games set from WWII right up to modern times and beyond. Since my vision of that 41st Millenium that’s so popular encompasses architecture beyond the current aesthetic of incredibly gaudy pieces, or Eagle Turrets with Penis Cannons, I’m very happy to include terrain pieces like these on my personal 40k battlefields as well.

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Photobucket Image Apocalypse:

Just a quick note to let visitors to my blog know that I am working my way backwards through the blog, repairing the image links that Photobucket cut off in their attempt to self-immolate their business. It’ll take some time, but it’ll get done.

My apologies for the inconvenience.

Update: Posts fixed back to 25th Sept, 2016 – Yay, over a full year of posts are intact again!

(and quite a few older posts beyond that, though not in any special sequence!)

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